The Ministry of National Education informs that, in order to enroll children aged between 3 and 6 years in preschool education, the following steps will take place, successively, in each educational unit:

• re-enrollment of children who are attending kindergarten this school year and wish to attend in the 2018-2019 school year as well – will start on May 7;
• enrollment of new children will take place starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollment and enrollment will be established by the management of the educational unit and will be posted, in a visible place, in every kindergarten, for the information of parents and interested public, including on its website (if applicable), and possibly on the websites of the school inspectorates.

Filling of vacant places, after the re-enrollment process is completed, will generally be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: upper group (children of 5 years), middle group (children of 4 years), and lower group (children of 3 years). Based on Government Decision no. 1.252/2012 and within the available places, children aged between 2 and 3 years may also be enrolled in the lower group.

If, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment requests is greater than the number of available places, general tie-breaking criteria and specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied, successively.

The general tie-breaking criteria are as follows:

• existence of a document proving that a child is orphan of both parents (the situation of a child coming from a children’s home/a placement center/foster care is assimilated to the situation of a child orphan of both parents);
• existence of a document proving that the child is orphan of one parent;
• existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• existence of a medical certificate attesting the child’s degree of disability.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (developed by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Board of Administration, and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest Municipality until May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied only after the general criteria are exhausted.

To ensure the transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the managements of preschool educational units will display, visibly, for all interested, the following information:

• the institution’s capacity (number of children it was designed for);
• the number of places approved by the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: lower, middle, upper);
• the general and specific criteria for children’s enrollment;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the set period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool educational units also have the obligation to visibly display information about their status, specifically whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-University Education (ARACIP).